The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a split-decision day for President Donald Trump on Monday, handing him a sweeping victory on executive authority while rejecting his position in three other high-profile disputes involving the Federal Reserve, mail-in ballots and the E. Jean Carroll civil judgment.
The biggest win for Trump came in Trump v. Slaughter, a landmark 6–3 decision that expanded presidential control over independent federal agencies. The court’s conservative majority ruled that presidents may remove heads of independent regulatory agencies at will, striking down a 91-year-old precedent that had limited a president’s ability to fire certain agency officials without cause.
The ruling validated Trump’s March 2025 firing of Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter and marked a major shift in the balance of power between the White House and federal regulators. The decision gives the president far greater authority to remove and replace officials across a wide range of independent agencies, including the FTC, the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
But the court drew a line at the Federal Reserve.
In a separate 5–4 ruling, the justices blocked Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, preserving protections for the central bank and its role in monetary policy. The decision allows Cook to remain in her position while she continues to fight mortgage fraud allegations brought by Trump officials.
The court also rejected a Republican-backed challenge to late-arriving mail-in ballots, upholding a Mississippi law that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive within five business days. The 5–4 ruling is expected to affect similar laws in more than a dozen states and territories.
In another setback for Trump, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal of the $5 million civil verdict awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll. The decision leaves in place the 2023 jury verdict finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The court denied review without comment, making that judgment final. A separate appeal involving an $83.3 million defamation judgment remains active in the lower courts.
The rulings came as the Supreme Court nears the end of a blockbuster term, with several major decisions still pending that could further shape Trump’s second-term agenda.
Among the remaining cases is a challenge to Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal immigrants and other noncitizen parents. The court is also expected to rule on state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that would ban transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams.
The justices are also weighing a campaign finance case brought by Republican officials seeking to remove limits on how much political parties may spend in direct coordination with candidates.
Taken together, Monday’s rulings showed a court willing to strengthen presidential authority over much of the federal bureaucracy, while still preserving institutional limits around the Federal Reserve, state election laws and civil judgments already upheld by lower courts.
